


Raise the House Lights

by ThisCatastrophe



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comedy, Eventual Romance, F/M, Konoha Village, Politics, Post-Fourth Shinobi War, Secret Identity, Slice of Life, Tenten has a bird!, Theatre
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-22
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-03-22 18:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13769691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCatastrophe/pseuds/ThisCatastrophe
Summary: It's the middle of summer, and a stage has appeared in Konoha.Between the oppressive heat, growing political dissent and a particularly boring mission cycle, Tenten has no time for whatever theatrical bullshit is happening on the corner below her apartment. She'd be pretty content to ignore it entirely, but trouble and excitement seems to gravitate to her.





	1. Parodos

In the summer, there was a little stage on her corner.

It wasn’t there when she first moved in, or when she got back from the war, or even a few months ago. Apparently it sprung up during a mid-week mission, built by quick young workmen who lacquered it well and fitted it with a little curtain and a painted backdrop of a mountain, or so said the old man who lived on the ground floor. Some nights, he claimed, in flurries of loose green leaves and their scattered streetlight shadows, a gentleman in a yukata visited it, opening and closing trap doors, touching up the paint, sometimes only sitting on the lip of the stage and watching the stars. Otherwise, it had yet to be used.

Naturally, she checked it for booby traps, tripwires, recording devices. One can never be too careful. In the end, though, all she found was a hidden dressing room behind the painted backdrop, some set controls tucked away under the stage and a stash of sandbags.

So she conceded defeat, and the stage became a part of her scenery. Morning, night, unexpected midday break--she passed by the little open-air stage across from the pharmacy and wedged between the West Ward branch library and the soba shop. It was the talk of the neighborhood for all of a week, and then it was forgotten again.

There was a stage on her corner, but Tenten didn’t think much of it. Not at first.


	2. Act 1, scene 1: Audition

Tenten was surprised that she woke up to Mr. Hirotsugu’s knocks rather than the sounds of sawing, hammering and planks dropping to the ground outside. She considered taking a moment to check her window but decided otherwise and opened the door for her neighbor.

Already it was midmorning, and Mr. Hirotsugu was dressed as usual in his tattered old haori and robe. His grisled, arthritic knuckles worried away at the palms of his nervous hands, and he looked up to her with a gap-toothed smile.

“Miss Tenten,” he began, “ever so happy to see you back in the village--and how was your mission this time? To the Land of Mist, was it? My wife took care of the cockatoo like you asked and--”

Tenten glanced around him, staring down the hall at a crowd barely hidden behind the stairwell. “Mr. Hirotsugu. What’s the noise outside?” A small child (one of the second floor residents, she thought) hid his face behind the doorway, shy as usual, and some of the adults avoided her gaze. Color rose to several faces, including Mr. Hirotsugu’s.

“Well,” the old man murmured. “Those actors from the Land of Oases are down there building a set, and they’ve been at it for hours.” Again, he wrung his hands, but turned a determined face up to her. “None of us could approach them all morning, but with a shinobi’s help, we might…”

Behind him, sleepy-eyed first year students and tired mothers rubbed at their faces. She saw now the dark circles that ringed every eye, and noted the haphazard way her neighbor’s haori draped over his shoulders, as if something had bothered him while dressing. “You need someone to ask them to stop working?” she said. “Hm. I don’t see why you couldn’t have done this yourself, but…”

Tenten thought of the bird on the bottom floor awaiting her pickup and the oxtail udon that her landlady would make in celebration of a mission accomplished and the librarian on floor four who would waive her late fees with only a wink. She sighed, though only shallowly, and turned back into her apartment.

“I’ll go talk with them. Thanks for taking care of Sho for me.”

She could practically hear Mr. Hirotsugu’s wrinkled face crack into a broad smile. “We appreciate all you’ve done for us, Miss Tenten,” he chirped. The delegation from the lower floors was beginning to leave, returning to their rooms in preparation for peace, and their leader himself only stayed a few more moments to straighten the mat outside Tenten’s door.

When she'd dressed in her first-day-off-in-a-week wear--an oversized Academy graduating class shirt and form-fitting athletic pants--she reluctantly shut her door and started for the stairwell. Surprisingly, Mrs. Hirotsugu was waiting for her on the landing, smiling and holding a little teacup in both hands. 

“The Land of Oases, huh?” Tenten asked. “I've never even heard of that one. Were they the ones that put up that stage?”

Mrs. Hirotsugu giggled, trailing after Tenten as she rounded the corner to the next flight of stairs. “Glad to see you too, dear,” she teased. “Miss Miwa on the top floor says she saw some of those actors while the stage was being built, but nobody's sure. It went up so fast, you know.”

Tenten ignored her ribbing, but ventured to throw a wry little smile over her shoulder, earning another laugh in return. “Well, at least something interesting might happen around here for once. Other than the soba shop fistfights.”

“Don’t say that, love. I don’t think Konoha needs any more interesting for quite some time.”

Tenten pushed her shoulder into the stairwell door and blinked at the sunlight, brighter on the street than in the southside hallway housing her apartment. Sure enough, the sounds of wood grew stronger; across the road, a small team of men, all wearing traditional clothing, crouched low around a blueprint while another team prepared to lift a mural painted on a thin piece of beech.

“Well, come by after you talk to them and pick up Sho,” Mrs. Hirotsugu commented. Already, though, Tenten had tuned her out. She’d realized just how disruptive the work was for their usually-quiet borough--no wonder the first floor residents were so numerous in that delegation outside her hallway. 

“Shinobi must do what shinobi must do,” she muttered to herself. Tenten crossed the street with her hands in fists.

The first face to look her way was the one that wound up directly under her when she halted: a man around her own age, rolling the sleeves of his navy yukata, blinking at her as if himself stunned by the sunlight. A shock of red paint, clearly outlined but thinly applied, curled around his eyes and trailed upwards to his temples; Tenten also noted little thumb-marks of paint at the corners of his lips. Momentarily she flinched away from the paint, but her memories of a troupe of Kumogakure actors, the locus of a years-past mission of hers, came flooding back. All things considered, this paint was nothing shocking.

“Yes, miss?” he asked. “This one is quite busy, if you don’t mind.” 

Polite speech. How typical, Tenten thought. The actors in Kumogakure didn’t bother with eloquent patterns, but she knew that many still did. Still, it seemed so out of place coming from a youth squatting in a circle, sleeves rolled, examining a worn plot of stage fixtures. “You’re making too much noise too early,” she said, pushing down a frown and willing impassivity into her face. “Not everyone gets up so early on a weekend.”

He shut his eyes and tipped his head with a gentle smile, though Tenten wasn’t fooled--there was a split second of scowl before the polite nod. “It’s midmorning, shinobi. The entire town should be awake by now.”

“I’m told you’ve been at work for several hours now,” she replied. “Look, we don’t want you to stop. Just don’t start up so early next time.” A scan of the faces surrounding the blueprint showed up an array of red-painted patterns impressed on light tans. “Now… you’re from the Land of Oases, right?” Tenten folded her arms and furrowed her brow. “Tell me about it. It’s not a country I’ve ever heard of.”

A man with a thin, serpentine face smiled at her. “As they say, ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind,’” he quipped. “This one doesn’t see why we’re treated as criminals, unless the lady came out here expecting to find some.”

The first man gave him a gentle swat with the back of his hand. “Quiet, Kazuo.”

“Nobody even knows what that one’s from, Kazuo.”

“Kazuo, did you read the script this week? I don’t think you did.”

Tenten blinked, more than a little stunned. The actors’ polite speech was suddenly breaking down, and she was all but forgotten. “Um, excuse me?” she stammered.

“Someone quiz him. Hey, Kaz, what’s your first line in scene 3?”

“Talking isn’t doing,” Kazuo replied.

“Wrong. Who’s the understudy? Someone get the understudy.”

The bickering actors clustered closer to Kazuo, prodding his skinny forearms and jostling him. Tenten was so entranced in the spectacle that it took her a moment to realize that the man directly beneath her was looking straight up, watching her face. She started and took a step back.

He followed, dusting off his yukata as he stood and shaking a stray lock of auburn hair from his face. “This one apologizes for my cast. They are young and overeager.” There was another polite smile, but this one seemed somehow less aggressive, merely forced. “You may call this one Koga, shinobi.”

Momentarily she considered shaking his hand, introducing herself, apologizing for her curt speech. But what kind of shinobi lets some lowly travelling actor introduce himself first, and in that phrasing, like a goddamn king? She tucked her hands into her pockets and confirmed that, yes, her keys were present, and a little bit of cash for lunch.

“Well, Koga,” she said, “you can stop calling me ‘shinobi.’ And your cast had better not cause any more trouble.” With that, she turned abruptly and headed for the low Ward gate leading into the city proper.

Tenten wasn’t back in the West Ward until almost midnight. Her calves ached from Lee’s training regimen (peacetime didn’t mean a damn thing to him, so naturally they did calf raises for almost an hour), her head ached from some incompetent desk chunin at the missions station and her belly ached from an insufficient lunch and no dinner to speak of. 

She’d been looking forward to today all week--once more, back in her home village where it was nice and sunny and not constantly raining like whatever politically-irrelevant hellhole she’d been assigned to stake out for the past week--and now? Her day was ruined from the getgo by some stuck-up travelling actors. She hadn’t even picked up poor Sho.

She stopped to arch a little, cracking a part of her lower back into place again, and turned to glance over her shoulder at the clock face embedded into the Ward gate. Surely it was far too late by now to pick up Sho; she’d have to let him stay over another night and pay the Hirotsugus for another day’s service. And she’d have to deal with an indignant bird, too. He knew her mission schedule better than she did.

Well, the least she could do for herself was to hop in bed as soon as possible. A quick shower, maybe a foot soak, then a nice, long rest.

“Evenin,’ shinobi.”

Or so she thought. 

Tenten turned her head slowly towards the stage she still barely remembered. Sitting on the lip, geta thrown to the ground in an unceremonious pile, was Koga, not trying to smile at her and not bothering to fix his posture, curling his hands around the corners of a wrapped bento. “Come here a second,” he called out.

“What do you need?” she groaned. “Please don’t tell me you’re planning to build set in the middle of the night.”

He chuckled, a surprised sound, as if he’d been caught off guard. “We’re not planning on being back until at least nine tomorrow.’ Koga patted the stage beside him, drawing his feet up into a fold. “You sound like you know a little about theater, then?”

For a second Tenten hesitated. “I guarded a troupe from Kumogakure a few years ago. The Hidden Cloud? I’m not sure you’d know where it is.” She stepped a half-pace away from the spot he’d indicated and sat down, elbows braced on knees. “What happened to your voice?”

“This? It’s off hours and nobody’s around to see me break character.” He shifted the box to the space between them. Tenten made a point to ignore it.

“Except me.”

“Except you. And you don’t count.”

She sat bolt upright, jaw tensing. “Excuse me? What’s that--”

“--I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I mean, if you’re out so late, you’re not going to see the character. Just the actor.”

Tenten glowered. “That doesn’t make much sense, you know.”

A beat passed between them. Koga averted his gaze and tugged at the bring wrapping on the bento. “Here, I brought you a peace offering.” He cleared his throat a second. “How do you feel about yaki imo? There was a vendor out at dinner time and I grabbed a few. Hopefully they stayed warm.”

She ventured to remove the lid from the bento box--it was a tiny thing, obviously something one would use for leftovers or snacks--and a tiny puff of steam escaped, chasing after the lid. “Whoa. They smell good,” she commented. “But who’s out selling yaki imo in summer? And how’d you keep these so warm?”

Koga, clearly more relaxed, smiled and leaned back on a hand. “Trade secret.”

Tenten shrugged after a short moment of consideration. “You know what? It’s too late at night to care. Let’s eat.”

They shared the sweet potatoes in relative silence, save the few times when Tenten had to explain that yes, the nightly soba shop brawl was normal, no, he shouldn’t go try to reason with the owner, no, please don’t pet that ginger cat because I know for a fact is has fleas, and yes, you can certainly see a lot of stars in this part of the city. Their breaths puffed hot against the cooling night air, and Tenten relaxed into a new point of view. The vista of her neighborhood from this stage was… well, it wasn’t broad, nor particularly beautiful, but it was an interesting angle, and she could see a lot of her favorite places from where she was.  
When the potatoes were gone, they sat in silence and listened to the muffled sound of a koto, floating down from the open window of the loft above the pharmacy.

“Koga, huh?” Tenten commented. “That was a nice peace offering.” With a satisfied huff, she pushed herself up off the stage and planted her hands firmly in her pockets. “You win this time.”

Behind her, Koga cackled for a split second. The sound rung from the stone walls of the nearby branch library, and she snickered at him in return. “The Battle of the Audition,” he remarked, “goes to the invading party.”

“Don’t joke like that.”

“Sorry, shinobi.”

She turned to face him. “It’s alright. And I have a name. It’s Tenten.”

Koga pondered a second before stuffing the bento back into its wrap. “Shinobi sounds better. More threatening.” He hopped off the stage with ease and bent to put on his geta. 

“Hm. You must make a lot of friends that way.” With a little shrug, Tenten spun loosely on her heel and headed, a little less stiffly, for her apartment building.

Behind her, there was relative silence for quite some time. Just as she crossed the street center, though, Koga called out once more:

“G‘night, shinobi.”

She shook her head, but smiled all the way up to the third floor.


	3. Act 1, scene 2: Table Read

“Try it again, Taro. From the top of the monologue.”

Why was she outside at this hour? Correction: outside, neither training nor on a mission nor in transit to or from one of the previous events? Why was she sitting on a worn trunk, almost thigh-to-thigh with Koga, focusing hard on the four-pointed star pattern on his clothes, trying not to think about the scene spreading before her?

Because, Tenten admitted to herself, some God somewhere hated her and never wanted her to sleep well again. 

One of Koga’s actors, made up in blue paint and bearing a set of dancing fans, spiralled back into his opening place. Taro, she thought, that was his name, as the man coiled a leg underneath himself and settled into a bent-legged sit. 

Behind them, she could hear the costume master—what was her name again? Yuuichi?—fitting Kazuo into an intricate royal gown, glaring him down as she lectured on the finer points of tulle maintenance. Koga hissed at her for silence and she piped down just in time for Taro’s first lines.

He beat his hands on the ground before taking up the fans, twisting as if drawn into standing by a strong updraft. Tenten glanced at Koga for his reaction, but he was already transfixed. Taro had made a good addition to the Mad Empress’s declaration of war, it seemed. 

They watched Taro spin and weave through the placeholder props on the stage floor, casting long shadows in the weak, early light: discarded paper cups and stacks of scripts and propped-up scrap wood, all representing elements that Koga had explained in the most confusing way possible. “These scripts, these are where the Empress’s broken throne will be—the author made the throne a really important metaphor, but you know, once I saw a production without the throne,” rambled a memory of Koga as Taro hop-skipped in front of the pile—

—“Taro, no, no, you can’t pass in front of the throne, you can only move in front when you’re about to—”

—but the scene continued, and he hopped over some scrapwood, which was possibly meant to stand in for an obscene teaset. Taro’s overlong gown, unhemmed, caught on a rough edge of the wood and he stumbled; to his credit the monologue continued, though Koga cried out as if offended, leaping from his seat on the trunk.

“Taro! Graceful! The Empress is graceful!”

Tenten decided to sit with the propmaster, instead.

\--

The sun had finally taken its rightful place in the sky, burning away the floating fogs of early morning, when Koga called for a break. Taro hadn’t solidified his spot as the Mad Empress by that time, having argued about characterization with Koga for quite some time (exactly 43 minutes, Tenten knew, though nobody had asked her), but nobody else had auditioned for the role save Kazuo, who couldn’t ever remember enough of the monologue’s key terms to make it through.

She knew there was something to be done that day, but her sense of time was shattered by the actors before the day even began. It wasn’t even light outside when Koga had knocked once on her front door and let himself in. How did he even know which apartment was hers, anyway?

He didn’t tell. Despite her protests, and her questions, and her initial uninhibited screaming at a mostly-unfamiliar man in her house at the ass-crack of down, Koga pulled her out of bed. He mumbled something about auditions, shoved a steamed pork bun in her mouth and manhandled her down to street level.

And now here she was, trying to develop an opinion about an obscure Warring States Era romantic drama called Ballad of the Dragon God even though she hadn’t seen a play since an Academy production of Gutsy Shinobi Abridged two winters ago. Yuuichi kept trying to get her to help with costumes based on period clothing and she couldn’t keep up with the script enough to help Kazuo run his lines (though, to be fair, he couldn’t either).

The worst part? All morning, Koga had ignored her protests. She couldn’t even complain to him properly.

Tenten leaned back against the stack of lumber she’d claimed as a seat and crossed her arms. On the stage, Koga and Kazuo wove through dance steps, back and forth over the same few counts of music.

She planned her revenge.

\---

“Koga, give me two of your actors.” Tenten elbowed the troupe leader’s curved back. “You messed up my morning schedule, so you owe me.”

From his stooped position on a stack of loose boards, Koga looked up at her. He rubbed his eyes and gave her a faux-polite smile; now that the other townsfolk were up and outdoors, he was locked into keigo, polite speech. The smile tensed even more at her smug, knowing look.

“Very well, miss. The… lady may take Kazuo and Matsuo.” He straightened his back and twisted to look at a small knot of stagehands gathered on the stage lip, indicating a short, stocky man with a length of rope in his hands. “Matsuo wears the kikko patterned haori. And the lady has been introduced to Kazuo.” With that, the troupe leader stood, stretched and vanished around the back of the stage.

At the mention of his name, Kazuo perked and rushed to Tenten’s side, shoving a length of fabric into Yuuichi’s hands. The costumer glared after him, but he skirted around Tenten’s side and began to fix his now-ruffled hair. 

“Miss, thanks,” he mumbled, stooping over to her ear. “That one is… rough with the straight pins.” Kazuo wrung his hands together through the too-long sleeves of his yukata.

“I’m not going to be much nicer to you,” Tenten said. “But I won’t stab you with pins, at least.” She beckoned Matsuo over and lead the two toward her apartment building.

\--

Mrs. Hirotsugu smiled at Tenten from her cozy kitchen. “Finally here for poor Sho? He called for you all day yesterday, you know.”

Sure enough, a powder pink cockatoo fluttered in from the adjoining room, screeching excitedly. He landed clumsily on Tenten’s outstretched hand and fluffed his wings. 

Tenten grinned at the bird; finally, the day took a turn for the better. “Thanks for watching him, Mrs. Hirotsugu,” she said, scratching Sho’s crest. “I’ll pay you for the last two nights when my mission pay comes in.” Behind the old woman, Mr. Hirotsugu beckoned Kazuo and Matsuo into the next room for Sho’s cage and seed.

“Don’t mention it. We know money can be tight.” Mrs. Hirotsugu turned around and rummaged through a low cabinet, setting aside pots, pans and packages. “Especially lately.”

Tenten was silent for a moment. It was clear that the old woman meant to make a war reference—naturally, the Fourth War had been expensive for every nation, but Konoha’s financial reconstruction was particularly slow. It was a sore topic for everyone, but for her…

“Ah, I forgot, Tenten. Please, don’t mind that.” Mrs. Hirotsugu stood and shoved a small bag of maize meal, freshly ground, into her free hand. “Here, take this. My son sent us some grains. It makes a good breakfast cereal. I know it’s not quite what you’re used to, but...”

The afterimage of Neji’s face stared back at her from the maize bag. Tenten shook her head to clear the vision and smiled to Mrs. Hirotsugu, genuine. “It’s alright. I’m healing, I promise. And thanks for the—is this cornmeal? Maize? Thank you.”  
Kazuo and Matsuo, carrying the long, awkward birdcage between them, disrupted their conversation; Tenten cradled Sho to her chest and backed towards the door after them. “I’ll bring the money tomorrow, ma’am, I promise. Thanks again.”

\--

“Something wrong, miss?” Kazuo asked, bracing the birdcage on his hip as Tenten fumbled with her door. He shook his head to throw a long strand of black hair from his face. “The lady seems… troubled.”

“It’s fine, Kaz,” she muttered. “Here, you two, set that cage anywhere in the front room. I’ll move it again later.”

With a clean shove from her shoulder, Tenten pushed the door open. Sunlight filtered in through her balcony window, playing on the bare kitchen table and the tableware drying on the counter. She stepped aside for the actors, then shut the door behind them.

Sho cried out happily, fluttering from her hands to the table so he could strut and stretch for the first time in days. The sight of the bird so at home made her smile. Always remember the positive, said a faraway voice in her memory. Dwell on the smaller things. With a deep, cleansing breath, she stepped through the front room and into her bedroom.

The curtains drawn aside, Tenten looked down to the street and watched the troupe as they reconvened. Yuuichi held a ladder for Taro, now touching up the lightwood mural on stage, and Koga’s auburn ponytail bobbed wildly as he ping-ponged from person to person, handing out some sort of paper. For a moment she evaluated the scene below, then returned to the front room.

“Well, you two,” she announced, “since Koga woke me up early today I’m gonna give you two tea and a nice breakfast. He doesn’t get any.”

\--

Thirty minutes later, Matsuo was sitting on the floor of Tenten’s front room, giving Sho little pieces of paper to rip to shreds while Kazuo shuffled dishes around Tenten’s kitchen table. He pulled a kitchen towel off an oblong dish of dashi-flavored tamagoyaki, letting the thin slices puff their last bits of steam into the breeze from the balcony, before turning the platter to make room for a bowl of daikon shallow-pickled in rice bran. 

“So,” called a voice from the kitchen, mingled with the sound of gentle steam, “tell me about the Land of Oases.” Tenten emerged from the small sideroom, carrying a small platter of ogura toast, a tiny dish of cream on the side, and a sturdy-looking metal teapot with chipped paint and several small scrapes along its sides. “I’ve never been farther into the Land of Wind than Sunagakure.”

Kazuo brushed his sleeves off where they covered his hands and moved past her to find teacups in one of the low cabinets. “These ones live by the only lake in the desert,” he said. “But it matters little. What’s past is prologue, now.”

Tenten scowled at the opposite wall. “Do you ever give straight answers?”

“Don’t worry. Most of us don’t even know what he’s talking about.” Matsuo stood from the floor, cradling Sho in one hand and a bundle of paper shreds in the other. “And drop the keigo, Kazuo. We’re friends now.”

Kazuo looked vaguely hurt, but only pouted and focused his attention on the three teacups he was carrying. “Alright,” he muttered.

There was a silence, cut only by moving tableware and the scrape of chairs, from the front room as Tenten went back into the kitchen for the freshly-steamed rice. Though she strained her ears for the telltale pops and clicks of whispered conversation, she heard nothing; there wasn’t any eyes-only conversation going on behind her back.

Maybe they really were just actors?

When she returned with the rice, Matsuo was seated already, pouring green tea into each of the three cups. “Sorry about him,” he said. “You want to know about the Land of Oases? Where do I even start?”

“Stop apologizing for me. I’m right here, you know.” Kazuo, now cradling Sho in both hands, frowned from the opposite end of the room, next to the birdcage. “How rude.” He turned to the bird and stroked the crown of his head with an index finger. “Time for you to go home. Come, let’s away to prison.”

Tenten couldn’t help but snicker. Matsuo sighed and slumped a little, casting a small look over his shoulder. “Fine, I’m sorry. I’m just looking out for you, though, you know? She’s going to be suspicious of us if we don’t accept her hospitality.”

Satisfied, Kazuo returned to the table and took one of the cups as his own. “She's going to be suspicious of us regardless.”

“I'm sitting right here. Do you want me to throw away your breakfast?”

“Anyway.” Matsuo reached for the rice, spooning it in great, steaming mounds into his bowl. “The Land of Oases is little and weak. We really don't have any shinobi to speak of. Koga did a little shinobi training as a kid, but that… that school in town barely counts. It's more of a racket if you ask me.”

“No shinobi,” Tenten parroted. “So none of your group can fight? That's awfully dangerous.”  
“That's not what he said,” Matsuo said. “Koga’s trained, he’s the closest thing to a shinobi we have, and the rest of us…”

“Scrappy?” Kazuo offered.

“That’s the word.”

She leaned back in her seat, cradling her teacup to her belly. “Doesn’t impress me much. Sorry.”

Matsuo shrugged gently and bent towards his rice, snatching up a slice of ogura toast in the process. “I didn’t expect it to. Let’s see, what else to tell…”

“Well, we’re an independent troupe.” Kazuo volunteered. “We make money off performances and travel on our own schedule. Been wanting to visit Konoha for a while; shinobi villages pay actors pretty well!”

“Hope that helps,” said Matsuo, mumbled around his rice.

“Well, it doesn’t… not help, I suppose—”

The front door flew open, crashing against the opposite wall and whining on its hinges. Sho screamed from his cage and rattled the thin metal bars. Lightning quick, Tenten was on her feet, fists clenched—why had she forgotten her weapons, even with strangers in her house? What was she thinking? And who was—

“How the hell long does it take you two to move a birdcage?”

In the doorway, balanced on one foot, Koga stared back at them. In the day’s heat he’d begun to sweat, and a slow drip crawled through the paint on his temple. His sleeves were tied back hastily with a mismatched sash, and a lock of auburn hair trailed down the close-shaved side of his head and into his face.

Kazuo leapt up, knocking over his tea, and rushed to Koga’s side. “Boss, we were—”

Matsuo cut him off, rising with his bowl of rice, toast balanced on top. “—she invited us in, sir.”

“I can see that.” Koga folded his arms and surveyed the actors before settling his eyes on Tenten. “You’re just planning to keep them from rehearsal, huh? Or is this payback for earlier?”

“It’s payback.” Tenten made a point to take a giant mouthful of rice when Koga’s eyes locked with hers.

They sat in silence, sizing each other up, while Kazuo and Matsuo cleared out of the room (ricebowls and toast and little stolen pickles in tow, of course). A vein stood out above Koga’s eyebrow, and his eyes narrowed to catlike slits.

“I don’t appreciate this, shinobi,” Koga murmured. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, you know. And what if—”

A loud growl cut him off entirely; his face was already fully red by the time Tenten realized it had been his stomach. 

Tenten couldn’t resist laughing at him, even with her face screwed into a glare. “Come on, Koga. Apologize for waking me up early and I’ll send you off with breakfast.”

It took a long second and another, even louder growl from Koga’s stomach before he conceded. His arms fell from their fold and burrowed deep into his pockets. “Sorry,” he grumbled. “Won’t happen again.”

“Better not. Tea?”

\--

The actors were off the stage and gone by late afternoon, separating into little groups that wandered into shops and restaurants or through the Ward gate, towards wherever it was that they returned to at night. Tenten had watched them from her balcony while sharpening her blades, taking note of their antics: Taro cinched the Mad Empress’s role, Kazuo was elected as the Northern Princess and, strangely, Koga himself seemed to slot right into a role as the Water Dragon.

How odd, she thought. What kind of troupe leader auditions only for a villain role, a force of nature character with, as far as she saw, no speaking parts? And something behind a mask? Of course, the mock dragon costume did seem to suit him—he could make the contraption move just like she imagined a dragon would—but even so, it struck Tenten as odd. Maybe she didn’t know as much about actors as she’d assumed.

As Matsuo and Kazuo left from the soba shop (standing a little too close together for just a casual conversation, she thought), she watched the way their clothes swished loose in the gentle breeze, how their footfalls clattered against the stone buildings of the West Ward. They seemed at ease, sated, carefree.

“Maybe they are just actors,” she commented to nobody in particular.

When the sun set, she elected to take a walk.

\--

There was, thankfully, nobody by the stage. The courtyard was empty, even of shopkeepers sweeping away leaves and children playing in the light of streetlamps.

She quietly unlatched the stage trapdoor and peeked down into the darkness below the platform. It was silent and empty save a stack of sandbags directly below the door and a cobweb nearby. Tenten shuddered at the thought of giant, invasive foreign spiders and quickly closed the door back up.

There was nothing in the hidden dressing room either, save personal effects; some haori and takeout boxes and a couple of abandoned scripts. She thumbed through one of Koga’s scripts for ciphers—nothing—, searched Yuuichi’s makeup kit for hidden poisons—none—and rifled through Matsuo’s toolbox for smuggled goods—zero. Tenten even checked the backs of the newly-filled closets, hoping for some kind of illicit materials. But no such luck.

Except one item. Just behind the stage’s right corner, in the alcove where the crew kept its wood supply, was a little supply closet. It was blocked in by lumber, which was almost impossible to clear away without drawing the attention of one of her neighbors, and the door seemed bolted from the inside, somehow. She could only manage to open it after some guesswork with a spare senbon, but eventually the latch slid open with a gentle grating noise. Tenten slipped inside and let her eyes adjust to the light.

An antler. It was wooden—mahogany, maybe—and lacquered well enough to glow in the low light. Around its base was a thick band of dark metal, stamped and reinforced with banding like what she normally saw on foreign siege weaponry, and each fork was topped in a sturdy capsule of the same make. The highest cap was sharpened, a blade glowing in the shaft of light from the doorway, menacing and out of place.

The whole thing stood nearly chest-high to her. It was far, far too big to belong to anything on a stage.

She relatched the door, sweating, and hurried home.


End file.
